“Wouldn’t tell. Said something about telling me over dinner.”
“Was I even invited?”
“Well, no. But I need you there.”
“Why?”
“To keep me in line. I’m really going to try to make this thing with Shakes work out.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks. Oh, and thanks for not making a joke about my commitment to Shakes.”
I’d been so close. “No problem.”
I banged a U-ey, was at Ana’s in fifteen minutes. She bounded into the car in a turquoise camisole and a beaded miniskirt.
“What?” she said.
“You’re not dressed like you’re trying to work things out with Shakes.” I took back roads to the highway.
“A girl’s got to look good.”
“Now you sound like Maria.”
Ana made the sign of the cross. “Maybe I could put on a sweater.”
“Do you have one?”
“No.”
I rolled my eyes.
211
Ana and I speculated about Jean-Claude’s job all the way to the river. I didn’t bring up any dead people. Or lawsuits.
Or blackmailers.
I needed a mental break.
People filled the seats at Paul Brown Stadium, and I wondered what event was going on there, since it wasn’t football season.
My cell rang and Ana picked it up, flipped it open. “Nina Colette Ceceri Quinn’s phone. . . . What?” Her concerned gaze shot to me.
“What?” I asked.
“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” she said, then hung up.
“What?” I asked, my palms sweating.
“There’s been an accident.”
I had a weird deja vu feeling of Tam telling me the same thing.
“Not Riley?” I said.
“No. Mr. Cabrera and his new girlfriend. The girlfriend’s dead. Mr. Cabrera’s in the hospital.”
I exited at the next off-ramp, got back on the highway and headed back to Freedom.
Twenty-Four
It was one of those hot muggy July days that just promised bad tempers and thunderstorms.
I looked around the Grabinskys’ backyard and felt none of my usual excitement at starting a job.
Maybe because this job had been started, then put on hold.
Or maybe because today there would be no surprise at all.
Everyone must have felt the same way because they walked around like they were tiptoeing around a casket.
I shuddered at the creepiness of it all.
Ignacio and his crew were working with Kit on readying the yard for topsoil.
Kit had shown up this morning sans BeBe . . . and sans hair.
“I didn’t like the staring,” he said when I’d asked about it.
Like people didn’t stare at the skull tattoo. I didn’t press because, truthfully, I hadn’t liked the hair.
It was almost ten and there had been no BeBe sightings. I was adopting a don’t ask, don’t tell policy where she was concerned.
Stanley Mack had enlisted Coby’s, Marty’s, and two of Ignacio’s men to help with the deck. They were just starting with the support beams.
